Investigation into Houston Spill ,of nearly 170,000 gallons of tar-like oil; into the Houston Ship Channel, Far From Over

 | by  PAUL J. WEBER

Posted: 03/28/2014 8:27 am EDT Updated: 03/28/2014 8:59 am EDT

In this March 22, 2014 file photo, a barge loaded with marine fuel oil sits partially submerged in the Houston Ship Channel. (AP Photo/U.S. Coast Guard, PO3 Manda Emery, File)


AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The barge operator that spilled nearly 170,000 gallons of tar-like oil into the Houston Ship Channel, closing one of the nation's busiest seaports for several days, will be fined by Texas regulators regardless of the outcome of state and federal investigations.
Investigators are still trying to pinpoint the cause of last weekend's accident involving a barge owned by Houston-based Kirby Inland Marine Corp., but Texas law considers the company carrying the oil a responsible party, said Greg Pollock, deputy director for the Texas General Land Office's oil spill response division.
"What that will be now I can't say because we don't have a closed case," Pollock said.
It won't be the first fine for the company, which has paid more than $51,000 for at least 77 spills since 2008, most of which were minor incidents.
Saturday's accident closed the main artery linking the area's busy ports with the largest petrochemical complex in the country. The channel in Texas City, about 45 miles southeast of Houston, typically handles about 70 ships and 300 to 400 tugboats and barges a day, and sees more than 200 million tons of cargo move through each year.
The channel wasn't fully reopened until late Thursday. At its height, the closure stranded some 100 vessels.
"As long as the weather holds up, we can get caught up in a couple days," said Capt. Clint Winegar of the Houston Pilots, an association of sea pilots.

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Coast Guards Aims to Reopen Houston Ship Channel

Nearly 170,000 gallons of tar-like oil spilled

By Juan A. Lozano and Nomaan Merchant

|  Monday, Mar 24, 2014  |  Updated 8:49 PM CDT

NBC 5

No timetable has been set to reopen a major U.S. shipping channel after nearly 170,000 gallons of tar-like oil spilled into the Texas waterway.

As workers in bright yellow suits picked quarter-sized "tar balls" out of the sand along Galveston Bay on Monday, strong incoming tides kept washing more ashore.

Elsewhere, crews lined up miles of oil booms to keep oil away from the shoreline and bird habitats, two days after a collision in the Houston Ship Channel dumped as many as 170,000 gallons of oil from a barge into the water along the Gulf Coast and shut down one of the nation's busiest seaports.

With cleanup well underway, the Coast Guard said it hoped to have the channel open to barge traffic as quickly as possible but that more tests were needed to confirm the water and the vessels traveling through the channel were free of oil.

The closure stranded some 80 vessels on both sides of the channel. Traffic through the channel includes ships serving refineries key to American oil production.

• Crews Rush to Contain Oil Spill Off Texas Coast

Officials believe most of the oil that spilled Saturday is drifting out of the Houston Ship Channel into the Gulf of Mexico, which should limit the impact on bird habitats around Galveston Bay as well as beaches and fisheries important to tourists.

"This spill -- I think if we keep our fingers crossed -- is not going to have the negative impact that it could have had," said Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, the lead state agency on the response to the spill.

The best-case scenario is for most of the slick to remain in the Gulf for at least several days and congeal into small tar balls that wash up further south on the Texas coast, where they could be picked up and removed, Patterson said. Crews from the General Land Office are monitoring water currents and the movement of the oil, he said.

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